Below is the e-mail I just got from Joe and the one I just sent him. He is such a good friend. They are so hard to find, with beautiful comprehension like that. I don't know. I think Alex is like that. I think a lot of things, though and reality doesn't come of most of them. It's wonderful when it does, though.

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Hey Jen Doll,

Guess who I saw at Gardner's today. Just guess! No, not Ernest Hemingway... It was your Dad, none other than Mr. William Hoppa just strolling on into book store as cheery and filled with enthusiasm as ever. You know, your Dad amazes me sometimes. He's not like most adults. He isn't cynical at all. He's filled with idealism and dreams. Do you know what I'm talking about?

First, of all I need to mention something about us getting together. We can do it any time on Wed. afternoons after five o'clock. I get done teaching right down the street from you then, so I could come by. Would next week work? Or the week after?

Thanks for talking about writing. I could relate to it all. You're definitely a writer though, Jen, don't forget that. You're not like most of them out there. You're an artist.

Writing is starting to flow again for me, both in poems and in this new little masterpiece. For me, writing will always be almost the same thing as taking a walk in the woods. Everything I write has the trees, the wind, the flowers, the moss, the mud, and the huge endless sky scattered throughout the plot. It begins and ends with the Earth and her elements for me. The weather is so important in writing. So is the season. If I ever achieve anything with writing, at least it will have the sky and everything in it.

Well, I can't talk about this new story yet. It's too deadly. It's the most horribly real thing I've ever written. I love two of the characters, and hate the other two. I suppose it's about someone innocent being destroyed by selfish people. It's dangerously real to me because of who it's about.

George is fine. He goes with me for walks. He's always lived here and he never leaves this place. I think he's one of the luckiest people I've ever met. It's kind of like a monastary out here. It's amazing what it does to the artist. It makes you feel like a child. This summer it's going to be so fun. Maybe this will be my last summer when I'm a child, when I'm just in the woods at night. Hey, you'll definitely come too. Martin, yes, I remember him. I suppose that Bird story is worth more than I used to think it was. I think a lot of my old stuff really isn't so bad. But my novel was bad, Jen. It was fun to write, but it isn't a story. It will always bug me until I write it again. I will someday.

I have no idea how Jes is. We never see her anymore. She got mad at us because we couldn't play with her anymore. She really just wasn't as dedicated and accomplished as we needer her to be. Now Ellen and I are only playing with older musicians, actually. Our drummer is thirty and incredible. You'll have to come out on March 30th to Border's 21st and hear us.

Wait, I need to talk about your writing again. I wanted to tell you, keep yourself interested. Write things that you really like. Write what you like and imbue it with what you know about love, nature, time, human nature, life, death, sex, religion, hate, suicidal tendencies, etc. ;-) I felt like I should give you some advice in our time of sparse output.

Well Jen, I love you, I think about you, take care of yourself. Bye!

Joe

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Oh Joe,

Do you know how much I love your heart? Do you know with what immensity we will always be everything existing in those woods that are so contradicting to reality because of their vast desirous beauty??? It's so wonderful, Joe. It really is, just the earth revolving like it does even if it revolves around apathy and ignorance, because we see it and we know it and we hold it within us and it is always wonderful. All of life is soft with summer. God, Joe we're children in the rawest form. And it will never end. Childhood is a continuum, a progression that intensifies and flares in our hearts. It is the search for purity and beauty and a quiet longing fulfilled, it is the virtue that is the only stable thing about man.

Joe darling, we must spend this summer being completely consumed with the most puerile innocence ever. First we must walk tragically through the woods in artistic strides of solemn appreciation and then when we get to the pond we must smile and laugh and talk about all the funny times when we were younger.

I'll look at you and say,

"Gosh Joe, it's just like Catherine and David, like Mick playing her music, like Faulkner, like Flannery, like an empyrean of connecting elements weaving the feathers of the birds with our hair until we're all so devoured by bliss that the whole earth is an interchangeable mass of beauty."

Then you'll call over George and pat him and he'll look at you with that endurence, with those untained eyes revealed to the day.

"Jen," you'll say, and I'll kiss George because I've missed him terribly.

"Jen, this is what we live for. This is why we write. Just look at the lambency of the ripples. Just feel the far away nirvanas living in the air. Feel the mountains, feel Italy, feel the wine. Don't we know it Jen? Don't we know it all? Can't we look at these trees that have been here years upon years and watch the wind shake their grove of silvery tresses that blow in bark and vernal youth and can't we just smile?"

And for a moment we will inhabit the surrounding nature and just hush our thoughts. I will grab your hand and drag you down and we'll find new meadows and plan up wild story ideas and smell the poetry in the air.

Oh, won't it be wonderful? Won't it be childhood? Won't it be eternal? You see, love, it is always there and we can't escape it. So no more talk of last summers and youth forgotten. Only memories that we'll exhume over and over throughout the years.

I'm so glad we're friends. You do something to me that makes me go mad and want to write everything down and see you and live at your house and love your darling mom who's gardening or feeding the cats. Have you ever noticed that? Or am I just the weird Jen I have always been?

I am incredibly excited about your story Joe! And all of it... poems and whatnot. Is there anything you can send me (some poems, or a story, or something!! you mentioned something called Victoria a while ago.. send me that?) to satiate my desire to know your mind??? Send something Joe!

Send it to prevent this brilliant insanity I'm slipping into. hahahah. These are the still illuminations of life that I treasure.

And yes, I love my dad. He is so great. Thank you for saying that because lately him and my mom have been having a hard time. Well I have to go soon, but Wed. I am marking my calendar and maybe we can get coffee or go drive out to a pond and swim and die from the chill! Haha. Thank you as well for all your encouragement. It is marvelous to hear you say that. I know this is going to sound horribly unlike me and conceited, but I think this e-mail turned out lovely? I always write well when I talk to you. Maybe I'll take this and construct some sort of story. It would be so easy to write about about you and me. Just because it's us and that's how things go. Well remember the wonderfulness of everything Joe and live in it continually.

Love,

Jen